With traditional epistemological institutions, there is a level of intimidation towards disenfranchised communities, those who are quarantined into spaces where an expanded cultural knowledge is limited. Pertaining to the theme of “community-driven knowledge”, community practices adapt the current infrastructure and can result in archives that reflect various nuanced cultural perspectives.
Framing an archive from an artistic perspective grants it, I believe, (1) a level of accessibility, an affordance for the audience to participate as much or as little as desired. It also—I believe—constitutes a semi-removal of institutional epistemological speed bumps by displacing the formality of an “archive” with the interactivity of art. (2) In the traditional sense, I feel that an archive is an entity that attempts or aims for objectivity. Though as we discussed last week this oftentimes fails due to the limited perspective of the archivist. Art allows for archived material to be brought into the realm of subjectivity, to take a perspective, or more accurately reflect society.
In reference to the theme of destruction and ephemerality, I found Nam Jun Paik’s statements interesting. Paik did not take steps to archive his work, under the ideology that art is meant to be experienced in its original form, that the aesthetic of preservation changes the original intent. However, not only is meaning changed based on the medium or context in which the work is displayed, but it also changes with time and space. Society influences how art is experienced and interpreted. When art is destroyed it is frozen in time, free from shifting cultural influences. The destruction of the art form is also its salvation.
Thanks, Tresson! I really appreciate your consideration of the *politics* — the democratizing potential — of integrating art into more traditional knowledge institutions. Our ways of knowing are not separate from aesthetics, and recognizing their inherently aesthetic and affective nature might help us, as you propose, to also acknowledge their subjectivity and appreciate the ways they relate to particular communities.
And some communities might privilege ways of knowing that are performative and / or ephemeral — in which case forcing community or indigenous knowledge into a fixed, preservable form might compromise its integrity.